My Pretty Woman
by taekwondogrl006
Summary: Sweeney misses his Lucy. A trip down memory lane, and a visit for our favorite pie lady...and who is that in Sweeney's chair?


**There was a barber and his wife,  
And she was beautiful.  
A foolish barber and his wife.  
She was his reason and his life,  
And she was beautiful,  
And she was virtuous,  
And he was... naive**

**Pretty Women, **  
**Blowing out their candles or  
Combing out their hair,  
combing out their hair then they leave  
even when they leave you and vanish**

** They somehow can still can remain there with you  
Even when they leave  
they still are there…  
They're there  
Ah! Pretty women**

***Sweeney's POV...Hey guys...I usually write Outsiders stuff, so this is a lil off the beaten yellow road for me but I love Sweeney Todd so I felt that I needed at least to give it a shot. As usual, I own nothing, blah blah blah....but I dooo love Johnny Depp's voice in his duet with Alan Rickman = ) Oh yeah, and this is just a little one-shot. If I get a good response, I might post more, cos this was easy and really fun to write so yay!* Enjoy, and R&R, puh-lease!!! xxx kait  
**

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

I was in my small barber room, over Mrs.'s Lovett's Pie Shop. Rain spattered against the window, the clear tears tracing their way down the warped window pane that was gritty with London dirt. I was empty and thoughtless, blankly watching the crimson drops of ruby slip down my favourite razor onto the grimy wooden floor. The room shivered with grief, the shadows unfriendly and the walls seemingly closing in around me. It had been fifteen years since I had held my family. It had been 5, 471 days. That's 7,884,000 minutes, if my calculations were on track. So….long. I couldn't breathe right, and funny noises kept ripping from my throat as if I was some injured animal on the streets. I was truly broken.

My latest customer sat in my newly "upgraded" chair, his eyes glazed with the film of death and his skin taking on the pale hue of a corpse. Well, that was the bloke was now. He had been a handsome young man of perhaps 19, with dark chocolate hair that flowed to his shoulders and deep green eyes. Jakkob, I believe his name was, had even smiled at me as he sat down, a dimple showing in his smooth cheek.

Not many people smiled when they came into my shop, and they certainly didn't leave smiling.

Not many, after all, even left at all.

I had shut off my emotions as he settled into my butter coloured chair. We were all eventually doomed to his fate. So what if I simply sped up the process slightly? Millions of people lived in London. Surely, one or two wouldn't be missed? Nobody reported my Lucy gone, nobody cared. I gripped the cold handle of my razor tightly as I sat down hard on my wooden chest, falling into a memory of my happy, golden years. 16 years ago, to be exact…

_Her wheat-colored curls shone in the milky morning light as she propped herself up on her elbow and gazed sleepily at me, gathering our bedsheets around her so she didn't get cold in the early morning chill that seeped through the cracks in the walls and the loose windows. I smiled back, tracing her dimpled cheek with the edge of my palm as I sat on the edge of the bed. I had been up for almost an hour now, busily prepping the small room I used for a barber shop that was right next door to our small attic house for a honest day's work. I brushed her hair out of her face, closing my eyes as I cupped her chin in my hand, leaning in for a sweet good morning kiss. Lord, her skin was so soft, and as pale as white silk. She was beautiful, a shining beacon in the shoddy slime hole that was London. Until recently, she was my whole world. But now, there was one more tiny flicker for me to cling to. Johanna. _

_Lucy reached for her housecoat from the rickety wooden rocking chair the perched next to our brass bed, as slipped into it as she padded across the small room on quiet feet to reach into the delicate white cradle that held our month-old daughter. Two perfect, dimpled hands waved happily in the air, Johanna's plump rosebud mouth opened and closed happily as she looked at me with clear blue eyes. _

"_Hello, love," Lucy cooed softly, pressing Johanna's small hand against her mouth and kissing it gently as she took Johanna to the ramshackle rocking chair and began nursing her. _

_I loathed the chair and insisted on a daily basis that it was a baby killer but Lucy adamantly refused to get rid of it, stating that is was a family heirloom, that her mother had nursed her in it and her mother before that, so therefore it must stay. And it did. Now, it was as much a part of the family as I was. I rose to join them and stood for a moment, soaking in the happiness until I felt I might burst. I pressed my hand to my breastbone; I could hear my heart singing vibrantly with joy. My life couldn't get much better, I thought jovially. There must be some limit, some line that stated how happy one can be in their lifetime. Anything over that is extra and must be disposed of. The bubble of serenity must pop, the dream must end. _

I knew dreams didn't last forever. Ignorance wasn't bliss so much as a wall around yourself that isolated you from the world outside. You may stay safe, but deep inside you know someone might come and knock your cage down as easily as you built it up. I remember the day my bubble popped.

_A month later, we had decided that Johanna was old enough to venture out into the world. Lucy had tried to plead against this, saying that Johanna was far too young and that she might catch cold very easily in the chilly spring air, but I pressed her until she agreed, albeit reluctantly. My argument was that we should take her to the park, so Johanna's first experience of outside air wasn't the type she could practically see, as was the case with the foul air that lingered in the streets of London. That was the day my life changed, for that was the day that the foulest, most corrupted human creature to ever walk the earth set his eyes on my pure, glowing Lucy. My darling wife was no longer safe as long as Judge Turpin had his slimy black heart determined on winning her affections. _

Pain, horrid and fiery coursed through my body, sweeping out thought and reason and replacing them with the black rage that swept over me, time and time again. It always consumed me and tore with bloody teeth at my sanity.

My whole body shook with it as I exhaled, gripping harder on my friend, my shiny, wondering razor.

My lifeline.

This _need_, this _wanting_…

It ate at me incessantly.

_It must be stopped. _ I raked my hand through my hair, most aggrieved. I _must_ _kill_ Judge Turpin if I was to ever get any peace of mind ever again.

And so my quest to erase him from God's green earth increased tenfold.

I _would_ feel his blood run hot over my shaking hands, and damn me if it wouldn't be as black as his mind and his shriveled heart.

My shop door open with the cheery tinkling of the bell and I suddenly leapt to my feel, startled as a hare. Mrs. Lovett's head peeked in, her nose wrinkled delicately against the smell.

"Good God, Mista T, don't I tells you, you 'as to rid of the body soon as you're done wif it! I coulda been a customa! What if someone should 'ave SEEN YOU? And, Heavens me, the smell is wafting through me pie shop! People leavin' left an' right cos the smell is settin' their stomachs a churnin' and their heads a spinnin'!" she stormed, averting her eyes from the corpse sprawling in the chair. As she stepped forward her shoe slipped in a puddle of blood that had leaked down from my customer's sliced neck, causing her to lurch forward and grab the stiffening corpse for support. . Mrs. L shrieked in disgust, pulling the sheet from around the corpse and cleaning her shoe, then launching herself away from the dead boy. Shooting me a filthy look, she nodded meaningfully at Jakkob and then at her pie shop.

"I 'ave been needing some more 'supplies'" she said pointedly, motioning for me to dump the body, clean up my room, and slap a smile on my face. Cos _"Heavens 'elp us if there ain't no meat ta put in 'er pies!"_ I thought spitefully, trying to manage a grimace in her direction. God, I missed my Lucy. I longed to hear her tinkling voice, free of a cockney accent and a deep guttural brogue from growing up on the wrong side of the alleyway. I wanted to listen to her tell stories and laugh with my customers, back when they left my shop, satisfied and smiling with their heads still attached to their shoulders. I missed those times something fierce.

I snorted. Yes, of course, I will serve my customers cordially, remove their coats, and ask them to take a seat. I always slice my necks with a smile, that's my motto. I set about mopping the floor, swishing my pink-tinted mop against the blood-sticky floor to the beat of the rolling thunder outside.

"I am gonna go tinkle, an' when I get back there better not be a dead person in that chair, and not a splatta of blood on that floor, d'ya hear me?" she spat at me, her heels clicking as she went out the door, stomping down the steps as she hollered to Toby to keep the customers entertained. I bit back a smile as I heard Toby's boyish voice answer her, then Mrs.'s Lovett's against as she screamed at him for something. Poor lad for having to follow around that needy woman like a lost puppy, answering her ever order and coming at her beck and call. Whilst he may dote on her, he didn't trust me; I could see the suspicion glinting like gunmetal in his wide eyes whenever he saw me.

I mused over this as I cleaned, sending down the body, scrubbing the floor and my razors. Sitting down in my chair, I set my razor down on the small table where I kept my suds and the leather sharpening strop, and going to work on trying and getting the bloodstains out of the material. I was working so hard that I hardly noticed the tears sliding down my cheeks, landing softly on the floor, not unlike the forgiving drops sliding down the windows. I stopped what I was doing, and thought back to my golden years.

In that moment, I was no longer in the barber shop, my human slaughterhouse. I was with Lucy, my Lucy once more, Johanna swathed safely in her loving arms. I was finally happy, in my own little corner with the memories I cherished.

For now, I could live behind my walls once more.

***Hope you enjoyed! This is my first Sweeney fic so please be gentle, and I don't have a beta so got abuse me for improper grammar and stuff...I is just a simple writer!!!* lol R&R!!!**


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